[kelkay]

I have an older Windows XP computer. 250GB hard drive. SATA 7200 rpm. Now I read about the Sata, and I have not read good reports about them. Since that is what was in this, I guess that is what I must replace it with. I do not have the money to pay somebody to do this, so I will have to attempt this myself, which is overwhelming. I have done very little with the lid off of a cabinet of a pc. I have replaced a Cdrom, and added memory, cleaned the pc inside, and fixed loose connections...that is about it. If I had the money I would just say forget it and get another cheap computer. But that is not going to happen right now. I have HD TUNE and the reallocated sector count is showing yellow. It shows the status is ok, but there website said this is almost critical level when it is in yellow like that.
I have 4.9% bad blocks, and it took 322 minutes for the error scan to run, which I thought was unusually long to run that program for some reason.

Ok. Now must I use a SATA hd, or can another type work with some minor changes?
Before a couple of days ago this computer ran very well for it's age, and was much faster than a friend of mine's new computer. Then it started acting up. I got a corrupted registry file, and then it was showing unmountable boot volume errors...and has been a real chore to keep going. At times it goes pretty fast, other times it is at a crawl. There are no virus or malware. Chkdisk was done several times. It is defragged religiously. So I am thinking that I will be better off with a new hard drive. I thought I was going to have to do a restore to original factory values, but now that I found out about the hard drive...that won't help me. I wish I knew a computer person who could help me, but I do not. I am on my own with what help I can get online. Any comments or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16822148469
I found this for 49.99 but I think I have to purchase a cord with it. This is a bare drive. I guess that means I will have to figure out how to open the hard drive enclosure with the older hard drive, and make sure I put this one in, exactly as the other one was set in previously.

Edited by kelkay, 07 October 2009 - 08:38 PM.

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Now I read about the Sata, and I have not read good reports about them.

i'd love to see what you're talking about there...SATA has been around for a while now (at least in tech terms)...and it's a well proven technology...there are issues with SPECIFIC drives and drive manufacturers but not SATA as a whole


whether or not you can use an IDE drive(older style hard drive) or not is dependent on your motherboard....pretty much all boards still have IDE controllers on them it's just a matter of whether you've got an open one or not

that said i'd still suggest you stick with SATA...they're much faster and more efficient... if your computer can use SATA (which yours obviously can) then it's just smart to go with SATA...and the drive you linked to looks perfectly fine...the installation is a snap....you just disconnect the old drive and slide the new one in where the old one was and hook up the cables as they were on the old drive...then you've got to re-install windows, all your drivers, and all your software

then you can get a cheap USB HD enclosure (without a drive in it) to mount the old drive in and attempt to recover all your old data

[dsenette]

Now I read about the Sata, and I have not read good reports about them.

i'd love to see what you're talking about there...SATA has been around for a while now (at least in tech terms)...and it's a well proven technology...there are issues with SPECIFIC drives and drive manufacturers but not SATA as a whole


whether or not you can use an IDE drive(older style hard drive) or not is dependent on your motherboard....pretty much all boards still have IDE controllers on them it's just a matter of whether you've got an open one or not

that said i'd still suggest you stick with SATA...they're much faster and more efficient... if your computer can use SATA (which yours obviously can) then it's just smart to go with SATA...and the drive you linked to looks perfectly fine...the installation is a snap....you just disconnect the old drive and slide the new one in where the old one was and hook up the cables as they were on the old drive...then you've got to re-install windows, all your drivers, and all your software

then you can get a cheap USB HD enclosure (without a drive in it) to mount the old drive in and attempt to recover all your old data

[kelkay]

Thank you for your opinion on this. If there are certain ones I should look out for please let me know. I had to do a pc recovery just a while ago because that corrupted file wouldn't let me start windows up normally again. Now I am trying to decide whether to order a hard drive, or see what I can get locally and go ahead and get this job done. (I am dreading it...since I feel this is pushing my limits) But you say it is easy enough, and that does make me feel better.

[kelkay]

well I went ahead and switched out the hard drive today...I got a Western Digital 500 GB Sata HD. It went pretty smoothly. Now I just have a ton of updating and downloading to do. Thanks for the help on my questions.